Targeting patrols effective for police

Practice matches officer's specialty with trouble spot

Posted: Monday, March 08, 2010

Joe Gammjoe.gamm@amarillo.com

The Police Department for years has assigned its officers to different divisions, be it patrol, special crimes, detective or another unit.

But police brass also have a proclivity for identifying individual officers who prove adept at snuffing out certain kinds of crimes. This practice can pay dividends when updated crime numbers are released by the department, as they were last week in an annual report that revealed a 7.1 percent increase in crime in Amarillo from 2008 to 2009.

The specific crimes that drove the overall increase were arson, thefts, robbery and assault. For instance, the number of assaults reported to police rose from 1,016 in 2008 to 1,116.

Police officials identify neighborhoods where reports of assaults are growing and assign to those areas officers who display an ability to defuse tension, mollify residents or otherwise tamp down incidents.

It's these "directed patrols" - involving two to eight officers - that are most commonly used by police in their effort to extinguish crime that flares up.

Police Chief Robert Taylor said data collected each week is analyzed and used to determine where directed patrols will be deployed.

On any given day, officers might be assigned to patrol parking lots in unmarked cars, surveil a house where drug dealing is suspected, or watch a suspect in a series of metal thefts.

The officers who are charged with conducting the patrols often don't know they are going to be required to participate until they arrive at the station for their shifts, police Sgt. Brent Barbee said.

"Very often the guys from the cops unit come in and are told, 'Guess what, your hours are changing this week,' " Barbee said.

Barbee said the patrols have been effective in preventing certain kinds of crime.

He said if police suspect narcotics are being sold out of a house, they'll stake it out. Police will make traffic stops on people who leave the house and ask for permission to search the vehicles, he explained.

The locations for a rise in certain crimes are always changing, according to Barbee. "Any neighborhood can be the area we're looking at this week."

He said if there's a rash of break-ins of cars in a parking lot, an unmarked car might cruise through more often.

In February two officers patrolling a parking lot of a motel arrested a man who was seen taking electrical wire from a truck, Barbee said.

Sgt. Steve Brush, who helps oversee directed patrols, said any neighborhood in the city can see a rash of crimes. Brush said there's often one house in a neighborhood that is the origin of much of the area's crime, whether it's narcotics, theft or vandalism.

"They are great neighborhoods except for one house," Brush said. "All the neighbors will know; it's that one house and it's hard to get rid of."